If you are looking for the new 2020 SEO checklist, you are in the right place. Most of the website owners search for SEO checklists when Google de-ranks their website introducing its new algorithms. The Panda and Penguin algorithms shook millions of websites that spammy and unworthy. Though these algorithms benefit search engine users by providing them only the true content, few genuine websites fell into the list of de-ranked websites due to their weak SEO tactics. So before you get into that list, you need to implement good SEO guidelines for your websites. This not only saves you from Google’s penalty but also boosts your website in terms of traffic and ranking. So let’s get into the complete SEO checklist you need for your website. Deep research has been done in order to provide you with the working SEO checklist. You can implement them ASAP if you are suffering from the Google penalty or you could use them step by step to gain a long-run success with the provided tips.
There are many tools available on the internet today which perform complete optimization for your website like on-page SEO, off-page SEO, link building, etc. Complete SEO is one great tool that performs complete SEO right from driving conversions to building rank. Check out below about more tools that help your site and great tips that fetch you what you want from your website for your business.
SEO Checklist
Keyword research, link building, on-page and off-page SEO – this is the checklist most people misinterpret. Agreeing these are major points, there are ample other points people need to consider in order to impress their visitors and the giant Google. Let’s dive into them!!!
Find out worthy keywords
As said this is the major to-do-list in the SEO checklist. Let’s get more deep into it to bring you a crystal clear view of what keyword research is. Most of you may have tried using different tools for keyword research but still failed ranking better for those keywords.
The tools Google Analytics, KWFinder, Keyword Planner, ATP (AnswerThePublic) etc. are most-preferred tools that give accurate data of keywords for different niches. You can simply enter the product or the word for which you need the keywords. You get a bunch of keywords with the search volume and difficulty type. Remember, not all keywords bring you good rank or traffic. You need to find out relevant keywords with low competition in order to step ahead in the process of ranking. Researching the powerful and useful keywords may consume a lot of your time, but it is necessary to gain what you wanted.
Finding the tools using the above tools is not rocket science, you can easily navigate and get your job them.
There are other ways to find keywords
- LSI keywords (Latent semantic keywords) – Appear at the bottom of the search engine result page. You can also use synonyms of your keyword.
- Keywords suggested by the search engine – Type something on the search (do not hit enter), you get a series of suggestions are which your long-tail keywords.
On-page optimization
When it comes to on-page SEO, there are a few important things you need to consider.
- Use short URLs
- Use H1, H2 and H3 tags for titles and subtitles
- Include external and internal links in the content
- Optimize the complete website with high-quality content.
- Sprinkle Latent semantic keywords in relevant places.
- Provide a meta title and description with apt keywords describing your webpage.
Off-page SEO
Optimizing your website off-page is very crucial to rank your website on search engines. Let’s see what are those off-page SEO checklists.
- Link building – Get worthy backlinks to your site. Analyze competitors and find out powerful links. Also, remove spammy links from your site to avoid Google penalty.
- Fix broken links
- Identify crawl errors – Make Google crawl your website.
- Know how Google views your page
- Include images, charts infographics and videos on the website
- Check for readability on the website
- Create social media engagement
- Contact influencers to promote your website
There are tools that make off-page optimization easy. Google Analytics is a free tool that lets you know your site performance, user behaviour, audience report, traffic analysis and many other tasks. There are also other paid tools that also allow you to access free trial versions. Explore SEMRush, Ahrefs, Complete SEO, Moz etc. These tools do most of the SEO functions and suggest ideas to build better strategies in order to rank you better. If you are a WordPress user, there is a plugin called Yoast SEO which handles technical optimization and content.
Monitor your Website
You need to monitor your website, know how it appears in the SERP. Your webpage needs to visible on rank pages to fetch traffic. So you need to find whether your pages are indexed on Google or not. Google Search Console is a free tool that lets you monitor your website and helps you in gaining better visibility on search engines. It lets you find number of indexed pages on the search engine. You need to just create an account and enter your domain name and you get the results and insights.
Dwell time
Dwell time refers to the time a user stays on your website. You need to make them stick to your website as soon as they enter. Users should stay on your website without bouncing back, hence you need to create a beautiful first impression. Provide relevant content, insert images to impress the users so that they stick to till they know about your website is. This is how visitors turn into users and your future customers.
Bounce Rate
Maintaining a lower bounce rate is necessary for your website. The percentage of visitors turning back to the search engine result page is called the bounce rate. This is a negative SEO factor that affects your ranking.
Page speed
Can you imagine your users bouncing back just because the page they opened is loading too slow? To avoid this your website needs good page speed so that the users enjoy a great experience on your website. You need to use a best host, optimize images, reduce number of CSS or JavaScript files, reduce number of plugins, and implement good content management tools. This not only increases your page speed but also the dwell time if you have a better user interface.
Secure with https
Securing your website with an SSL certificate not only benefits you but also your users. Having HTTPS before your URL will protect you from third parties, and other confidential information like credit card details, personal details etc. The good news is having HTTPS protocol helps in boosting your rank on Google. This means Google loves secured, trusted and certified websites. So, if you are not yet switched with a secured protocol, do it now.
Schema Markup
If your website is not ranking first on the search engine result page you are losing some of your traffic. But having a rich snippet on the result page will overcome this issue. Schema markup will help you get snippet which says what you are. Basically schema markup is a semantic vocabulary with HTML tags. This technique gives a big boost to your website, so go ahead with tools like schema generator.schema, schema.org etc.
Make it mobile-friendly
Your website needs to be designed mobile-friendly. Most users access the internet on mobile devices and tablets so the user interface should be the same on mobile devices and desktops. Make your website look mess-free so that users do not get distracted with unnecessary ads or irrelevant content or images.
In a nutshell, knowing the latest SEO checklist will help you boost your website. Consider each detail discussed above in order to gain what you need for your website and your business. Keep an eye on your competitors to find their success strategies. Make use of tools and software available online for performing the latest techniques.
Have a glance at some important SEO tools for your reference – Google Analytics, SEMRush, Ahrefs, Moz, KWFinder, Google Search Console, Keyword Planner, Schema Generator.schema, Schema.org